Am I right in assuming that AirPrint will only work with compatible printers?

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An article in MacWorld about 4.2 says:

As Apple announced on Wednesday, however, AirPrint will work one of two ways at launch: with a compatible printer from HP (and eventually, we presume, printers from other manufacturers) or with printers shared via your Mac or PC.

does anyone know how it discovers available printers?....it would be nice if you could specify an ip or mac address rather than have the device and software try to do a search for the device on your lan....some of the printing software for other mobile devices is "dumbed down" and doesn't allow you to specifiy ip or mac address and it makes discovery problematic

Sound like it works just like the print magic app already for sale in the app store. Ken, if your printer is in a network, it should find it and make available to print. You can download a free tester for the print magic app to see if it works with your network.

So I'm now confused about this air print in 4.2. I understood the fact that the iPad Air Print will only work with the listed HP wireless printers. But then someone posted that it will also work with a wireless printer on a wireless LAN. Well I have a wireless Canon Printer on my wireless LAN and my iPad can't find it. So did I miss read this or am I doing something wrong?

Am I right in assuming that AirPrint will only work with compatible printers?

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Not quite.

Also, it is not clear to me whether it will work with Ethernet printers on a wireless network or only direct to wireless printers.

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Airprint will work on a wireless network.
I just set it up today.
This is what you need.

First you need an Apple computer that can either print wirelessly on your network or is plugged into a printer.

You then need to download and install Printopia on the Mac computer mentioned before (Printopia is $9.99 with a free trial demo.)

With Printopia running on your Mac you can stream print jobs through the Mac to the printer from your iPad.

I have an HP 3 in1 non-wireless printer plugged into the USB port of an Airport Express.
I print wirelessly from my Macbook Pro through the Airport Express to the printer.
Adding Printopia to my Macbook Pro allowed my iPad to stream print jobs through the Macbook Pro over the network through the Airport Express to the printer.
This is essentially what Apple said Airprint would do before they changed their minds.

I`ve printed over this wireless system through my Macbook Pro today very easily from the iPad.

I don't have the exact thread but its here in this forum (I'm being lazy at the moment). Take a search for 'enable AirPrint" there is a manual method for both Mac and pc. I successfully printed from my canon today after following the setup process

Well I guess the rumors about Apple removing the ability to print from non-e printers was true. I was able to print to my WiFi HP printer... but only if I shared it from my Windows PC. This worked in betas 2 and 3 and the first GM. But the final 4.2.1 it no longer works. I can't believe they really did it.

I don't have the exact thread but its here in this forum (I'm being lazy at the moment). Take a search for 'enable AirPrint" there is a manual method for both Mac and pc. I successfully printed from my canon today after following the setup process

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I assume you mean the thing where you manually load and then start a service on a windows box? I did that and while my printer is showing on my ipad again, it won't actually print. Might try rebooting but something seems to be getting stuck. I see my printer but when I select it to print the spinning wheel "busy" indicator just spins and spins and then stops. Never prints.

Oh well. Of course I just bought this HP wireless printer right before the e-print models rolled out. Typical of my luck lol.

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